Firm Commitment

Why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it

Colin Mayer

Deals with issues of management, entrepreneurship, investment, and corporate finance

Looks at an institution - the business corporation - with which everyone is familiar and offers an appreciation of the contribution and failure of this organization

Written for an audience of non-specialist readers who are interested in understanding what lies behind the headlines that dominate our press

Addresses major global business and economic problems and provides an understanding of the central issues

Demonstrates how a combination of economics, law, and philosophy can be used to provide deep insights into the world we live in

Numerous examples and short case studies

Firm Commitment

Why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it

Colin Mayer

Description

The corporation is one of the most important and remarkable institutions in the world. It affects all our lives continuously. It feeds, entertains, houses and, employs us. It generates vast amounts of revenue for those who own it and it invests a substantial proportion of the wealth that we possess. But the corporation is also the cause of immense problems and suffering, a source of poverty and pollution, and its failures are increasing. How is the corporation failing us? Why is it happening? What should we do to restore trust in it? While governments are subject to repeated questioning and scrutiny, the corporation receives relatively little attention.

Firm Commitment provides a lucid and insightful account of the role of the corporation in modern society and explains why its problems are growing. It gives a fresh perspective on the crises in financial markets, developing countries, and the environment. Based on decades of analysis and research, it describes a new approach to thinking about the firm which not only stops it destroying us but turns it into the means of protecting our environment, addressing social problems, and creating new sources of entrepreneurship and innovation. It sets out an agenda for converting the corporation into a twenty-first century organization that we will value and trust. It takes you on a journey that starts in the Galapagos, ends in Ancient Egypt, and in the process brings you to a new level of appreciation of the economic world we inhabit.

Firm Commitment

Why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it

Colin Mayer

Table of Contents

PrefacePart 1: How the Corporation is Failing Us 1. In the Beginning2. Morals and Markets3. Reputation4. RegulationPart 2: Why It Is Happening 5. Evolving Enterprises6. Bought and Closed7. Capital and CommitmentPart 3: What We Should Do About It 8. Value and Values9. Governance and Government10. Without EndAppendix: References and Further Readings

Firm Commitment

Why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it

Colin Mayer

Author Information

Colin Mayer is former Dean of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. He is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is an Ordinary Member of the Competition Appeal Tribunal and a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). He has served on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals and assisted in establishing the prestigious networks of economics, law and finance academics in Europe at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and ECGI. He was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University, a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, and the first Leo Goldschmidt Visiting Professor of Corporate Governance at the Solvay Business School, Universite de Bruxelles. He was a director of Oxera between 1986 and 2010 and was instrumental in building the firm into what is now one of the largest independent economics consultancies in the UK.

Firm Commitment

Why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it

Colin Mayer

From Our Blog

The corporation is the most important institution in the world - an institution that clothes, feeds and houses us; employs us and invests our savings; and is the source of economic prosperity and the growth of nations around the world. At the same time, it has been the cause of terrible poverty, deprivation and environmental degradation, and these problems are set to increase in the future.